Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for October 17, 2020

Now your principles will be nice and clean.

When you try your best but you don’t succeed………

At least that bath will cool you down.

so, Calvin, are you or are you not pleading the Fifth Amendment?

A nice bath of principles always does the trick.

Well, I detected a flash of enlightment there!!!

I remember this one. I clipped it out of the paper and tacked it up on a company cork board. It was there a couple of days before it disappeared. The ‘free’ tacks did too. ;-)

Age 6 is a little early to learn that your principles don’t have the slightest bearing on what happens to you, but life lessons are life lessons no matter how old we are. Like my late mom used to say, “Life is not fair.”

forced to compromise because of a “greater power”, Calvin?

He can always discuss his principles with the principle.

Politics in 2020.

Me too, Calvin, me too!

At least you won’t feel like you’re selling out.

Unfortunately, too many people vote their principles because those principles affect others and not themselves.

This would have been better with Hobbes. Where is he? Why isn’t he with Calvin?

You don’t HAVE principles, Calvin. You have desires disguised as principles.

What PRINCIPLES. Self-centeredness is not a principle last I heard. Though, in today’s world, maybe it’s now a virtue……

It’s difficult to make a stand when you’re sitting in a tub of water with no clothes on… ☺

I think that you need to be a certain age to have princiiples.

I seem to remember that when I was a kid, we never, ever filled the bathtub like that.

Sad, but true.

Kilroy was here (with hair and a shorter nose).

The last panel is a sad commentary.

Baths happen. Sort of part of nature that one can’t avoid.

Oh, play with the bubbles. Pretend you’re a shark. Baths can be fun!

you’re SIX, you don’t have any principles, and left to your own devices you’d be dead in a couple days at most.

I love his expression in the second panel.

You have options, Calvin. Just know, paraphrasing Churchill, that some change their principles to remain compatible with family and others change families to keep their principles.

That pretty much explains life.

That’s a little ranting before compliance.

I believe Waterson wrote this during his battle with his syndicate over licensing Calvin & Hobbes for merchandise, which he was (and still is) strongly opposed.

As you can tell, he was quite frustrated.